Keep your villagers in tents Tutorial

So, you’re here because you’d like to try keeping your ACNH starter villagers in their tents whilst also being able to terraform, welcome!

This tutorial is mostly aimed at people who have some experience with ACNH and more specifically people who are looking to design an island very thoroughly and are wanting to do this for aesthetic reasons. Doing this will impede general gameplay so I wouldn’t recommend doing this if you actually want to play ACNH.

Fair warning, this is a long tutorial because I wanted to be very thorough. This is a delicate process, it’s not difficult but can sometimes be tedious so I wanted to give you as much information and help as possible.

If you have any questions or if you’ve been trying this method and found any mistakes or additions then don’t hesitate to message me on Instagram so that I can modify this page.

Please be aware that I may update this tutorial as I test and learn more about this process.

I know this is a lot of preamble, but the following information is crucial to know before you start.

What you will need:

As far as I know there is no way to achieve this method without the following:

✿ A second Nintendo Switch

✿ A second copy of Animal Crossing New Horizons

✿ Two Nintendo Switch Online accounts and subscriptions

Note: It may be possible to do this with only one Nintendo Switch Online account + subscription but I didn’t try it and I really wouldn’t recommend it. Even if you could make do with one account the process will be much easier with two NSO accounts. In addition, if you want to travel between your two islands, you’ll need to have a second NSO account + subscription.

General Gameplay constraints:

There are a few things to note before attempting this method. Doing this involves keeping not only your villagers in a tent but also Resident Services and your Resident Representative. All of this means having to live with certain restrictions.

⚠️ THE BIGGEST LIMITATION: TIME-TRAVEL ⚠️

Keeping Resident Services in a tent is fairly straightforward. Just don’t place your fifth villager plot. Keeping your first two villagers in tents is not so easy. If you’re designing an island for the aesthetic, you probably Time-Travel quite a bit. But to keep your villagers in tents, you must do it WITHOUT FORWARDS TIME-TRAVEL. I know that sounds awful, so let me elaborate a bit …

I did some tests after uploading my DA. It took roughly 5-7 days before one of my villagers upgraded to a house. You can definitely time-travel one day to allow the airport to open and you’ll probably need to do that. As for the maximum number of days you can go, I’m not sure of the exact number since I went a day or two forward long before I started testing by accident. When I tested it I was able to travel 5 consecutive days before one villager upgraded. This is why I would put the total of possible forward time-travel days at 7 days or less.

I originally thought the villagers were tied to the Resident Rep. which they sort of are. If the Resident Rep. upgrades to a house, the villagers will do the same the following day. I thought that if I did nothing on the Resident Rep. account, the villagers would never move out of their tents. Unfortunately, this is not the case.

They will always eventually upgrade but to give yourself some margin for error, I strongly advise you do not upgrade your Resident Rep. to a house. I also recommend you stay on a single day throughout your designing process and leave any possible Time-Travel days until the end, just in case.

Although I haven’t tested it much, I’m pretty sure that you can go backwards in time as much as you like. Of course, that’s of no use to you if you want to order items or grow flowers for example. However, I have some suggestions for how you can make it work.

Working around these limitations:

For full disclosure, I have a modified switch that I use to get items quickly. That’s all I ever use it for. You do not need a modded switch to keep your villagers in a tent, it will make things easier and quicker (and you can correct things if you make a mistake) but it is entirely optional.

So how can you work with this ridiculous time-travel limitation without mods?

✿ Treasure Islands: Having access to a Treasure Island would really help as that way you can get items pretty easily without having to order them. There are many ways to get into Treasure Islands, so take some time to do your research on them before you start.

✿ Use your second island: If Treasure Islands won’t work for you, there is another way. You must have an already completed island to even attempt this process so my suggestion is to use it to help you get items. This island can Time-Travel to order items, grow trees or bushes and then you can transport them to the other island. You will need to go one day forwards for this on your new island in order to open the airport but that should be fine. This is not difficult but it will be tedious, so be aware of that from the outset.

Fail-safe:

If you need to time-travel for a few days for whatever reason, there is a way to check your villagers’ tents before opening the game. Which means the game won’t save and lock in the island in its current state.

Open up the game and you’ll get to the title screen. The camera will follow one of your two villagers around (or Tommy). Chances are, villagers will be hanging out in front of their tent, allowing you to see if it has upgraded or not. This may take a few tries but if you see both villagers in front of their tents then you can open the game. Don’t forget to check both villagers though because sometimes one of them will upgrade and the other will not!

Sometimes the title screen will obsessively focus on little Tommy, while this is cute, it’s not what you want to see. If the title screen remains fixated on him after many tries, that’s a bad sign. It might be focusing on Tommy because your villagers have both built their houses and it doesn’t want to show you those until you load into the game.

To be on the safe side, if you can’t get the title screen to show both of your villagers in front of their tents, don’t log into the game and then don't Time-Travel forwards anymore.

⛺️ IF YOU HAVE READ ALL OF THE INFORMATION ABOVE THEN YOU ARE READY TO START SO LET'S GET TO IT! ⛺️

First grab your two Nintendo Switch consoles.

SWITCH A: Start with an island you have already. On that island you must have already unlocked terraforming by getting to 3 stars and having the K.K Slider concert. So, the switch that has an island with terraforming on it we’ll call Switch A.

SWITCH B: On the other console you should have a copy of ACNH inserted into the slot or downloaded from the Eshop and it should have no save data on it for ACNH. You’ll need to start fresh. Let’s call this other console with no island on it, Switch B.

All good so far?

STEP ONE: CREATE A NEW RESIDENT ON SWITCH A

Now you need to create a new character on your island on Switch A. If you already know how to create a new resident on an island you can skip the section below.

STEP TWO: GET GRINDING!

Next, you have to build up this resident. The goal will be to transfer this resident to a new island on Switch B. We have to do a few things first though. Essentially, everything that you unlock and do on this island will transfer with you to the new one. You won’t be able to unlock most of it once on the new island because it won’t have an upgraded Resident Services.

Now that you have your house, you could technically transfer this character right now. That said, there are a lot of things you should unlock or do before transferring your resident. Here are the most important ones, detailed in full and then a shorter, briefer checklist summary (which is an image you can save) so that you can make sure you have everything you need before transferring.

In this next part we’ll go through creating a new island and the transfer process for your newly created resident. You could make the character you’ve just built up the Resident Rep. of this new island but we’re not going to do that for a few reasons:

✿ To give yourself a maximum amount of time before your villagers upgrade to a house.

✿ A Resident Rep. is tied to the island, so basically not being the Resident Rep. means you can always transfer the character back to their original island on Switch A if you need to for whatever reason. This means you don’t have to do all that collecting and grinding again.

✿ It gives you more freedom when placing your house.

✿ There’s no disadvantage to not being Resident Rep. when you can’t place buildings etc. anyway (because Resident services is not upgraded).

STEP ONE: CREATING A NEW ISLAND

Take Switch B and start a new island. Here are a few things to note when choosing your map and starting a new island:

✿ You won’t be able to change your villagers so make sure you’re happy with the two you get!

✿ Take plenty of time to choose your map. Unlike with a normal island you’ll need to take into account the space you have available to you when you first land on the island. This is because you will immediately have to place down three buildings (your tent and your villagers’ two tents), you won’t have any tools to cross water or go up cliffs, you can’t terraform and you will not be able to move them afterwards. So, make sure the area you have access to at the start gives you plenty of room.

✿ Don’t forget about all the normal things you need to take into account, the colour of your airport and the location of Resident Services for example.

✿ Set your Nintendo Switch clock to the season you want your island to be set in as you won’t be able to Time-Travel to fix it after settling the island.

✿ Don’t be afraid to start again if you get onto the island and decide you don’t like something, particularly if it’s something you won’t be able to change.

A note about Nintendo Switch profiles:

To make this new island you’ll need to use a Nintendo Switch profile, this one doesn’t have to have a Nintendo Switch Online account. For the sake of ease, when you do the next step, I’d recommend using the same Nintendo Switch account that you used to make the new character on Switch A (or at the very least use the same Nintendo Switch Online account you associated with it). Basically, do not use any accounts you’ve associated with your Resident Rep. on Switch A for the new character who’s heading to Switch B, otherwise you won’t be able to visit your island on Switch A.

STEP TWO: THE TRANSFER PROCESS

Ok so now take Switch B and use a different profile (with a NSO account) to the one you used to make your Resident Rep. Start up the game and you’ll see Timmy and Tommy and the usual welcome screen. When prompted select “I’m moving” and this will begin the transfer process. From here on in, just follow the instructions on-screen.

You will then have to go over to Switch A to process the transfer on that end too. Load up the game as your newly created resident and enter the settings menu by pressing the minus button on the title screen. When Tom Nook asks what you'd like to do select "Move to a new island", he'll explain everything from there. If you’d like to run through the process quickly before you start to roughly know what's going to happen here’s a link to the official Nintendo explanation of how to do this:

Official Nintendo Guide - Resident Transfer Process

At the end of the process, you’ll fly to the island and Tom Nook will give you a house transfer kit. You can start terraforming and choosing custom design codes right away before you’ve even put down your house! I’d recommend being very sure of where you want to place it beforehand as you won’t be able to move it afterwards. You won’t have access to your storage amongst other things before placing your house though so bear that in mind.

AND YOU'RE DONE, HAVE FUN DESIGNING !

Continue below for some extra tips !

Grinding for Nook Miles when you've already played through the game a bunch of times can be really irritating, here are a couple of things I tend to do to try and gather some and fast !

✿ An easy way to get some Nook Miles initially and fast is to pick up all of the golden tools (you do not need to craft them, you could get them from another character on the island or a friend for example). This should net you enough miles to pay off that first loan.

✿ Another good way to get Nook Miles early on is to go diving.

✿ Upgrading your house and filling up your storage will get you a good sum of Nook Miles too.

✿ Fishing, catching bugs and selling sea shells will get you some Nook Miles, as well as watering flowers, writing on the bulletin board and changing your passport.

When you place the three initial buildings it can be hard not to mess up, especially if you're trying to get them in a line with equal spacing. It's especially annoying because you can't pick anything up or drop anything to help mark out where you want things to go. Unfortunately there are no do-overs but you have literally all the time in the world to place them because at this point the game's clock hasn't started. So as long as you don't close the game, take as much time as you need to put them down.

Some things that can help are :

✿ Using things like trees and weeds that are already on the ground to count spaces and try to be exact about things.

✿ You can also take a screenshot, send it to your phone and crop out everything except your map which will appear in the bottom right of your screen. Then you can edit the image and mark out where you want things to go.

✿ It helps to have a rough idea of where you want things to generally be and if in doubt, give yourself plenty of space around the tents. You can always fill up extra space but you can't give yourself more.

The one other building that you do have the option to place with this method is the Museum. It's entirely up to you whether you want to have it or not. I chose not to because I wanted the extra space. If you do want to place it, a couple of things to bear in mind are:

✿ Your Resident Rep. will have to be the one to donate the initial 5 critters to Tom Nook which will prompt him to give you the museum kit to place. After that, switch back to your transferred character.

✿ The Museum will take a day to be built so I strongly suggest that you place it the day that you arrive (after Tom has given you your phone and the game's clock has started) if you know you want to have it on your island. The reason for this is that it takes out a day of Time-Travel. You have to go one day forward to open the airport anyway so you may as well do both at once and make the most of the opportunity.

✿ As always, once placed the Museum will not be able to be moved so choose where you put it carefully.

Note: As far as I'm aware, building the Museum will not trigger your villagers to upgrade out of their tents. However, sometimes this game does weird things. If something does happen, just transfer your second resident back to Switch A and start a new island. You'll be quite early on in the design process so it shouldn't be too much of a problem.

Also don't forget that if you want even more tents, you can even add more residents !

I hope this Tutorial was helpful for you. Please let me know by DM on Instagram if you need any further help or if I wasn't very clear on some of the steps, I'm happy to try and help. Have a wonderful day and take care ! 💙